PhilFo 

Has anyone alerted all winter olympians to this dire threat?

livedarklions

Are you actually claiming that a xc skier doing a leisurely pace on a slightly descending path is obliged to put out more effort than a cyclist attacking steep climbs?

I'm willing to grant you that xc skiing at an elite level is more demanding than cycling at an elite level, but what that has to do with the alleged benefits of cold working out is absolutely nothing.

livedarklions

This just in--- Qatar has just been announced as the site of the 2034 Winter Olympics.

wolfchild

I did way back in post # 80.

LarrySellerz

lol XC skiing is way harder than cycling. You can literally sit down, do nothing, and keep going forward on a bicycle

PeteHski

Cycling may well have an easier entry point, but it's as hard as you choose to make it. Elite level cycling is about as insane as it gets in terms of physical effort even if it isn't a balanced full body exercise.

Lombard

One is also much more inclined to stop on xc skis if a breather is needed - at least I am.

livedarklions

Did you actually read the example I was giving? Please tell me how you can attack a steep climb on a bike by sitting down and doing nothing.

rosefarts

The skin track I’ve got timed is 1500’. I think it’s 1.4miles. That takes an hour. By that I mean I turn my watch on in the parking lot while getting ready and I’m sure several minutes pass before I go up. Wind, ice, and soft snow all change day to day so my time changes.

My semi-lost tangent the other day was up a run classified as “black” and while the skins stuck to most of it, there were many times I was hiking personal switchbacks through what would be waist deep if I wasn’t supported by skis. It’s trudging along slowly. I think that 1800’ took me an hour and a half. It’s pretty cool being the only set of tracks on a hillside though.

wolfchild

Comparing low effort on skis to high effort on a bike is just a piss-poor comparison. Also a bike provides a serious mechanical advantage of low gears which allows you to be more efficient and climb hills easier...( unless you climb hills on a singlespeed like I do )... XC skis have no mechanical advantages when going uphill. Cold air is more dense than warm air and adds a significant challenge when skiing or winter cycling

gene99

challenged by air, eh?

rsbob 

From today’s ‘warm’ ride. Got a bit too warm and had to start unzipping at a balmy 43.



Brrrrrrr

PhilFo 

This is false when human physiology comes into play. Unless you're moving past a thousand feet per second. Air density between the coldest, driest air, and the warmest, moist air is not perceptible to a human being. The temperature and humidity definitely affect breathing, but the density itself doesn't affect a person's performance when moving through the air mass. Perhaps over a whole human lifetime, you may see a difference of a couple watts due to actual air density, but in reality, no.

elcruxio

Making it as hard as you make it to be is of course true. But I'd go as far as to state that every activity has the lowest viable intensity below which it's just not possible to properly perform said activity. Take running or climbing for example.

For XC skiing the lowest viable intensity is funny as it takes years of experience to perfect a technique where you're able to move with very little effort. That also requires slack skis which in turn are much slower if you want to go at a decent clip.

However even with the traditional method in my opinion the lowest viable intensity for cycling is far lower than for xc skiing. If I had to go the same route of say, 50km's with my fatbike of with skis, the fatbike would be much easier.

But in the end it really is what you make of it.

livedarklions

My original point was that the differences between xc skiing and cycling were so great that assuming it was cold air making the xc skiers more fit was stupid. Thank you for confirming that.

Your cold air physics argument is total crap as PhilFo so ably explains.

BTW, you didn't answer my question. How do you attack a climb by sitting there doing nothing?

Where I grew up in Minnesota, there was a park across the street that had an old bridle path that people used for xc skiing. It had virtually no hills either way. Most people on it were not exactly knocking themselves out with effort.

PeteHski

That's what I meant by easier entry point. But the sky is the limit when it comes to cycling effort. XC skiing may well be a more complete all-body exercise, but cycling is not limiting in terms of aerobic effort. Comparing distance travelled in different sports is meaningless too. Obviously I can cycle further than I can walk, run or ski XC. The great thing about cycling is that it allows you to go very easy or very hard as you choose or anything in between. Running and XC skiing are more limiting in this respect as the minimum effort required is higher.

Lombard

By eating unicorn horns?

wolfchild

I posted this over and over again...I ride singlespeed and fixed gear and my strategy for climbing hills is out of the saddle standing on the pedals and using my whole body for leverage, Hill climbing on a singlespeed is a very intense full body workout.

Trakhak

Indeed. I've been riding fixed-gear bikes for going on 60 years, using the same 71-inch gear (more or less; 51 x 19 and 48 x 18), first in the hills of southern Connecticut and since then mostly in the hills of northern Baltimore County. Never bothered doing any other athletic activities---no running, hiking, swimming, weights, stretching, etc. Muscle mass has diminished over the last couple of decades (now about 5' 7" or 8" and about 115 lbs), but so what? Less bulk for my heart to have to push blood through.

livedarklions

​​​​​

So cycling isn't a full body workout unless you're doing it?

Are you intentionally clowning yourself at this point?

rsbob 

Actually there are studies which show elite XC skiers do have better VO2 than any other type of athlete including pro-cyclists. Besides, XC skiing is a full body activity versus cycling. There is a famous sports physiologist in Norway, Stephen Seiler, who has been studying this for decades. He is also a cyclist. So much for ethnocentrism.

Lombard

Key word "elite". For the rest of us, a sport will only be as intense as we make it.

rsbob 

Yeah, you’re right. Why waste time studying the best to extrapolate level of fitness and VO2 to the masses when he could have studied you and me? Good point.

Homebrew01

Ok kids. Time to chill.

cjenrick

https://daveasprey.com/to-build-musc...your-workouts/